Blogs

Latest Blogs

Alliance Trust Investor Forum Report

Yesterday I attended the Investor Forum held by Alliance Trust in London. There were about 350 attendees with the usual audience of investment trust shareholders, many of whom had held the shares for a very long time from talking to a few of them. I pick out below some of the highlights (a full report of the meeting will be distributed to those who have registered for the Alliance Trust Shareholder Action Group (ATSAG - see https://www.sharesoc.org/alliance.html ). Chairperson Karin Forseke covered ...

Identity Theft – Experian, TalkTalk and Optimal Payments

There have been a spate of cases of digital identity theft or breaches of security from UK listed companies of late. Their shares prices have all been affected to a greater or lesser extent. On the 2nd October, Experian (EXPN) reported that 15 million US consumers who had applied for T-Mobile services had been the subject of theft of their personal information. T-Mobile is reviewing its relationship with the company, but the share price only suffered a temporary setback even though the ...

Globo – the Last Straw

Subsequent to my last blog post which covered the attack by Quintessential Capital Management (QCM) on Globo, this morning the company has made three further announcements: After an emergency board meeting, the CEO (Costis Papadimitrakopoulos), and the CFO (Dimitris Gryparis) have resigned and the COO has been suspended. A committee of non-executive directors has taken over after "certain matters regarding the falsification of data and the misrepresentations of the Company's financial position" were brought to their attention. The joint corporate broker, ...

Blogging and Shorting – Globo and Valeant

An organisation called Quintessential Capital Management (QCM) published a report on the 22nd October on Globo. The next morning the shares were suspended at the request of the company so as to enable them to provide a detailed response but they immediately refuted all the allegations in the report. QCM acknowledged that they are active in short selling and have taken a short position in Globo. They also have links to Simon Cawkwell who was also involved in a similar attack on ...

After the Storm, at the High Pay Centre

I attended a seminar organised by the High Pay Centre last night on the new public company pay regulations introduced two years ago. Speakers were Vince Cable who lead those changes when he was in power, and Ben Chu of The Independent, with the former promoting his new book "After the Storm". Vince covered some past history and his current concerns. That included a comment that interest rates were now lower than they had ever been before - indeed since Babylonian times ...